Category Archives: Art and design

Non-invasive imaging reveals landscape painting beneath Pablo Picasso’s The Crouching Beggar but who created it remains a mystery

Wrapped in a mustard coloured blanket with a white scarf and her head on one side, Pablo Picasso’s La Misereuse Accroupie (The Crouching Beggar) is a study of forlorn resignation. But researchers say that there is more to desolate character than meets the eye.

Beneath the mournful image lies another painting, a landscape, researchers have revealed after using non-invasive imaging techniques to examine the work.

The sculptor and installation artist, 61, on anxiety dreams, eating with family and being blood sugary

I need eight hours of sleep, but I never get it, except at weekends. I have anxiety dreams, usually about putting up an exhibition and not having the work. Sometimes work comes to me in a dream. You can be gnawing away at something for months, years even, and suddenly wake up and it gels. I do 10 minutes of Pilates every morning, if I’m in the mood.

Now available free on PC, Dead Space came closer than any other game to replicating the look, feel and atmosphere of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi thriller

This week, Electronic Arts has made one of the most interesting and atmospheric narrative games of the 2000s available for free to users of its Origin gaming service. Released in 2008 and created by Californian studio Visceral Games, Dead Space remains a heady, often terrifying thrill ride and if you’ve never played it before, it’s worth taking this chance – especially if you’re a fan of the Alien movies.

Although there have been numerous attempts to bring Alien directly to video games – most successfully, Creative Assembly’s incredibly tense Alien: Isolation – it’s Dead Space that has got closest to replicating the look, feel and atmosphere of Ridley Scott’s original film.

When Lewis Hine started photographing children at work in 1908, child labour was pervasive in American industry. His shocking images – from the cotton mills of Carolina to the coal breakers in Pennsylvania – helped bring about child labour laws. Hine was also renowned for his deeply empathetic portraits of immigrants at Ellis Island, and his work documenting construction workers at the Empire State Building

The Angel of the North, the artwork that helped put Gateshead on the map globally and which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this week, could have been nothing more than an idea on a sketch pad had it not been for the actions of one councillor.

The most prestigious photojournalist prize in the world has unveiled the six finalists of its photo of the year contest. This is the first time in the competition’s history that a selection of finalists has been seen before the announcement of the winner in Amsterdam on 12 April Warning: contains graphic images

German photographer Tobias Friedrich has been named this year’s winner for his ‘perfectly lit and composed’ panorama of a wreck off the coast of Egypt, while British winner Grant Thomas captured a couple of affectionate swans

Revellers descend on New Orleans streets for parades and rowdy fun as Mardi Gras caps the carnival season in a city with a celebration of its own – its tricentennial. Many of the floats commemorate key events in the city’s history